Archive for September 2010

10:30 pm — Go to bed. Listen to fully sick boys across the road have fully sick car stereo competitions.
1:20 am — Claire sneaks in to visit.
1:30-3:00 am — Various shenanigans involving demands for milk and “more space!”
4:20 am — Get up to go to the toilet. Come back to find bed position taken. Move toddler, who wakes just enough to yell “Daddy, stop!”
5:00 — Get up, eat eggs
5:30 — Out the door and on the bike
6:03 — Arrive JP’s house
6:15—8:20 Ride trails, feel decent but not “good”, get wet, have fun, talk shit, get enormous hunk of grit in right eye
8:30 — Breakfast: more eggs, sausage, two double caps and a muffin
10:00 — Arrive work

I feel like I’ve been fighting something off lately. A combination of high churn work during the day, a race to get the new Baum site up by night and general life bizniss has got me surfing on the edge. So when I decided to go up to keep Pete and Sam company, it was with the intention of rowing a quick 500 and the good ol’ six minute DB C&J.

500m PR was a bit of a surprise given intentions and conditions. During the second effort I tried to push of my toes more, to shove my feet ‘up’ the pads more, as I’d had with trouble coming off the slide during the first 500. The new method only made things worse. Not sure what to do about that … maybe focus on quad extension? No idea.

DB C&J was harder than it should have been. I had to set the bell down twice and wasn’t setting any kind of blistering pace. No biggie.

Still feeling pretty smoked in the shoulders and with legs full of DOMS from the last workout, but was up for whatever Pete wanted to do. I just wanted to move around. We did some pressing when Sam came up to do a 2k. Pete decided we all should and I figured ‘Why not?’ I used Sam’s suggested pacing: Settle into a pace you think you can hold during the first 1,000m. Try to keep it steady in the next 750 (harder than it sounds), and then drop the bomb for the final 250. 25 strokes. Anyone can count to 25.

The back squats were heavy, but well within limits. 95 on the back felt good, all the way down into the hole with no sticking point on the way up. It’s what you want in a room with a skinny chrome bar, a freestanding rack and bare iron plates. It’s also a good indication that it might not be too much of an ask to trump a 102.5kg PR, given what’s possible with the confidence of a cage and safety bars.

Helton was a long, hard, steady grind. Pete came in to say hi just after the first round. He asked if I was feeling good. I said no, and he advised scaling back the reps or rounds, but that really misses the point of this kind of work. The training effect here presents itself when the physical urge to call it quits kicks in, and you choose instead to do another rep.

34km and 580m of climbing, (via Neil’s blog), but the most important things are best described with pictures anyway.

This goes up:

This goes down:

Moody and Neil’s mate Andrew Downie joined us for a 2.5 hour joyride from the bottom of the Stockyards, up over the ever-awesome link track to swoop and giggle our way speeder-bike style through the pencily gums. We took a small break to fool around on a newly discovered pump track, teased the roadies among us about their cautious attitude toward puddles and generally had a rockin’ good time.

Oh, did I mention that Ryan had done a 1.5 hour trail run before meeting us and still spanked me good, with 26 less gears? Good.